Researching John Egan

He was born near Aughrim, Ireland, in 1811. He came to Aylmer, Lower Canada, Canada, in 1830. After working with a lumber company on the upper Ottawa River, he entered the business himself near Bytown. He founded the town of Eganville in Ottawa Valley on the Bonnechere River, later expanding his operation to the Quyon, Petawawa and Madawaska Rivers. Egan was one of four men to finance the construction of the first flour and sawmill in Aylmer in 1839, and in partnership with Joseph Aumond, he founded the Union Forwarding Company in 1845. In the late 1840s, he began building a number of sawmills. Together with Ruggles Wright, he also operated a steamship transporting goods on the Ottawa River. Egan also played an important role in the development of railways service to the area, including the Bytown and Prescott Railway.

He bought James Wadsworth's farm at the ‘Fifth Chute’ on the Bonnechere in 1838, which he later developed into the village of Eganville, Ontario. John Egan is known as the namesake for Eganville. He built dams and timber slides along the Bonnechere River and employed thousands of men through lumber camps and transportation. Thanks to Egan's interest in red pine and business investments, the surrounding area would become a hub for lumber activity with Eganville at the centre.

By 1850, he was the dominant force in the timber trade along the Ottawa River. He had been elected mayor of Aylmer in 1847. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada in the riding of Ottawa County in 1848 and was reelected there in 1851. In 1854, he became the first elected representative for the newly formed riding of Pontiac.

A decline in the red pine market forced him into bankruptcy in 1854.

He died in 1857 at Quebec City while still representing Pontiac, after two years of ill health.

In 1864, the Egan Township in Quebec was named in his honour (see: Egan-Sud, Quebec).

After initially studying business at DePaul University, he transferred to Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary, completing his studies under rector Msgr. Reynold Henry Hillenbrand at the University of St. Mary of the Lake. He promoted racial integration and was one of the clergymen who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama. For many years he was a member of the board of trustees of the Industrial Areas Foundation.

Ordained for the Archdiocese of Chicago, Egan worked several years in its inner city. In these early years, Egan was befriended and influenced by Saul Alinsky, an early leader of community organizing and co-founder of the Industrial Areas Foundation. Egan later prevailed upon Alinsky to pen his book Rules for Radicals.

Egan accepted a position at the University of Notre Dame, where he founded and directed the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry, "a national network of clergy, religious, and lay persons engaged in social ministry". One Egan's accomplishments of the early seventies was to deliver about 25 non-episcopal leaders of the Catholic Church in the country to a PADRES-sponsored meeting held at the Mexican American Cultural Center (now called the Mexican American Catholic College) in San Antonio, Texas. The focus of the meeting was to garner greater recognition and respect for the "Hispanic Agenda" within the institutions of the Catholic Church in the United States. John Joseph Egan figures prominently in the 2009 book Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America by Beryl Satter. The book discusses Egan's work co-founding, then leading, the Contract Buyers League, which fought the discriminatory real estate practice known as "contract selling" that was used to exploit newly urbanized black home buyers.

The organization United Power for Action and Justice was co-founded by Egan.

The Monsignor John J. Egan Office of Urban Education and Community Partnerships, at DePaul University, is named in his honor. Egan's papers are housed in the manuscript collection at the University of Notre Dame Archives.

Egan, known as The Albino piper was a native of Dunmore, County Galway. Like his countyman Patsy Touhey, he was lefthanded. His tutor in pipe music as Liam Dáll Connolly, and his grandson, John Burke (piper).

He emigrated to the United States and spent much of his subsequent life in New York City, barring tours with John Cronan and Patsy Touhey across eastern states.

Francis O'Neill preserves a comment by Nicholas Burke on Egan, who stated that Egan "was a grand player and very powerful in his music."

Egan died in New York in 1897.

Born in the town of Centerville, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, Egan went to Oshkosh Normal School (now University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh) and taught school. From 1912 to 1940, Egan was a conservation game warden and was involved with the Boy Scouts of America. In 1941, Egan served in the Wisconsin State Assembly as a Republican. In the United States November 1942 election, Egan was defeated for re-election to office. Egan died of a heart attack at his home in Manitowoc, Wisconsin before his term in office ended in January 1943.